Many different data communications techniques have been developed and widely deployed across many different kinds of wired and wireless media. Telephone and data networks, for example, make use of many different types of data communications protocols and techniques. As more complex computing, communication and entertainment systems become increasingly reliant upon interactions between multiple devices, the need for effective data communications continues to increase.
One data communications technique that has seen widespread adoption is time division multiple access (TDMA) encoding. TDMA is a channel access technique that allows several transmitters to share a common wired or wireless channel by assigning each transmitter its own time slot for using the shared channel. TDMA has been widely implemented in mobile telephony, wired and wireless networks, home and industrial controls, and in many other settings.
Conventional TDMA is limited, however, in that it can be relatively inflexible or inefficient for some applications. Efficiently allocating TDMA bandwidth can be relatively difficult, for example, when the number of transmitters sharing a particular channel changes frequently or is otherwise difficult to predict. This can lead to inefficient allocation of channel bandwidth and/or other challenges in effectively supporting all of the desired devices. Various attempts at “dynamic” TDMA have emphasized allocation according to bandwidth consumption, which can be useful in some settings but overly complex in others.
It is therefore desirable to create systems, device and methods that can adapt as transmitters enter or leave a communication system while still efficiently and effectively transmitting data on a shared communications medium. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.